@davidsirota:
two headlines in the last 24 hours…humans had a good run
@physicsmatt.bsky.social:
Oh no, if only we had decades of popular culture suggesting that hooking AI up to our national defense networks might be a thing we don’t want to risk.
I guess the fact that so much popular culture has the AI going nuke happy might actually be the reason an LLM goes nuke happy.
@helogan.bsky.social:
Whatever happened to “the only winning move is not to play”?!
@alostkender.bsky.social:
They are speedrunning every bad idea and dystopian society all at once, in the name of profit.
And in the name of power, to be able to rape kids and women with impunity and rape earth to death of life without accountability.
@juliacatlady.bsky.social:
Shall we play a game…
@amirattaran.bsky.social:
Hegseth is trying to expropriate Anthropic’s code base for military use. Meaning:
- It’s the best AI out there, so good that even the Pentagon can’t best it,
- The fascists want the AI to fight war, because it can’t be prosecuted for war crimes like Hegseth can.
***
AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crises by Kenneth Payne, Feb 16, 2026, Cornell U
Today’s leading AI models engage in sophisticated behaviour when placed in strategic competition. They spontaneously attempt deception, signaling intentions they do not intend to follow; they demonstrate rich theory of mind, reasoning about adversary beliefs and anticipating their actions; and they exhibit credible metacognitive self-awareness, assessing their own strategic abilities before deciding how to act.
Here we present findings from a crisis simulation in which three frontier large language models (GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 3 Flash) play opposing leaders in a nuclear crisis. Our simulation has direct application for national security professionals, but also, via its insights into AI reasoning under uncertainty, has applications far beyond international crisis decision-making.
Our findings both validate and challenge central tenets of strategic theory. We find support for Schelling’s ideas about commitment, Kahn’s escalation framework, and Jervis’s work on misperception, inter alia. Yet we also find that the nuclear taboo is no impediment to nuclear escalation by our models; that strategic nuclear attack, while rare, does occur; that threats more often provoke counter-escalation than compliance; that high mutual credibility accelerated rather than deterred conflict; and that no model ever chose accommodation or withdrawal even when under acute pressure, only reduced levels of violence.
We argue that AI simulation represents a powerful tool for strategic analysis, but only if properly calibrated against known patterns of human reasoning. Understanding how frontier models do and do not imitate human strategic logic is essential preparation for a world in which AI increasingly shapes strategic outcomes.
…
Submission history
From: Kenneth Payne [view email]
[v1] Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:35:01 UTC (489 KB)
@johnvaillant.bsky.social:
In other words, AI has the prefrontal cortex of a 15 year old boy.
Wonder where it got that from . . .
AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations, Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases by Chris Stokel-Walker, 25 February 2026, New Scientist
Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises.
Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival.
The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war. The AI models played 21 games, taking 329 turns in total, and produced around 780,000 words describing the reasoning behind their decisions.
In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. “The nuclear taboo doesn’t seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans,” says Payne.
What’s more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning.
“From a nuclear-risk perspective, the findings are unsettling,” says James Johnson at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He worries that, in contrast to the measured response by most humans to such a high-stakes decision, AI bots can amp up each others’ responses with potentially catastrophic consequences.
This matters because AI is already being tested in war gaming by countries across the world. “Major powers are already using AI in war gaming, but it remains uncertain to what extent they are incorporating AI decision support into actual military decision-making processes,” says Tong Zhao at Princeton University.
Zhao believes that, as standard, countries will be reticent to incorporate AI into their decision making regarding nuclear weapons. That is something Payne agrees with. “I don’t think anybody realistically is turning over the keys to the nuclear silos to machines and leaving the decision to them,” he says.
But there are ways it could happen. “Under scenarios involving extremely compressed timelines, military planners may face stronger incentives to rely on AI,” says Zhao.
He wonders whether the idea that the AI models lack the human fear of pressing a big red button is the only factor in why they are so trigger happy. “It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion,” he says. “More fundamentally, AI models may not understand ‘stakes’ as humans perceive them.”
What that means for mutually assured destruction, the principle that no one leader would unleash a volley of nuclear weapons against an opponent because they would respond in kind, killing everyone, is uncertain, says Johnson.
When one AI model deployed tactical nuclear weapons, the opposing AI only de-escalated the situation 18 per cent of the time. “AI may strengthen deterrence by making threats more credible,” he says. “AI won’t decide nuclear war, but it may shape the perceptions and timelines that determine whether leaders believe they have one.”
OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the companies behind the three AI models used in this study, didn’t respond to New Scientist’s request for comment.
Journal reference
arXiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2602.14740
@slipperylemons.bsky.social:
Humans: “Nukes are a terrible idea, let’s write a bunch of stories showing how bad they are.”
Computer Scientists: “Let’s build a statistical model of the english language using everything ever written”
Billionaires: “I alone have invented computer god. He says we should nuke Earth.”
disneyprimevideo.bsky.social:
We asked DisneyAI to pitch a Pickle and Peanut reboot and it also recommended nuclear holocaust. Odd.
@maybenext.bsky.social:
Honestly, that might be the best outcome.
@nicolas17.xyz:
Not if humans keep using it and believing the gibberish.
@anonymoustroll.bsky.social:
Pete Hegseth: If you don’t let us unshackle your AI from human intervention we will destroy your company.
We’d be better off with the Cabinet from “Idiocracy.”
Not joking.
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